


Being Sad for No Reason (a how-to guide)

by acrosstheroom



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Light-ish Angst, Panic Attacks, Self-Harm, just a vent fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:41:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27069559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acrosstheroom/pseuds/acrosstheroom
Summary: Just me projecting my mentally ill thoughts and actions onto Yuta because I have no better way to cope. Read tags for potential triggers.This might become a series I just add to whenever I freak out again, lol. Anyway, I hope somebody might enjoy this!
Comments: 2
Kudos: 29





	Being Sad for No Reason (a how-to guide)

Sitting on the couch, it’s been hours. Solving and undoing and solving and undoing his Rubik’s Cube mindlessly, a skill he used to be proud of but one that now is just a matter of twiddling his thumbs, Yuta’s mind is anywhere but where he wants it to be. There’s a bottle of water next to him but it’s been full since the previous day when Mark had filled it for him. His eyes ache.

It’s 6 AM, the rest of the group should be getting up by now, Yuta’s been here since 2:16. With every floorboard creak he hears, his stomach tenses just a little bit more, preparing him for all the questions he’ll have to answer once his group mates see the pile of wrinkled clothes and bloodshot eyes that he is. He wears his heart on his face.

The “hey, hyung?” that comes from behind him startles him and he jerks.

“Oh — hey, Mark,” Yuta stutters, accidentally twisting his Rubik’s cube in two directions and forgetting what he was trying to do. 

“Are you good, dude?” Mark asks. He lays his hand on the back of the couch for Yuta to pick up and play with, but he doesn’t. 

“‘M fine, Mark,” he says, halfheartedly tossing his toy across the couch. Mark knows this mood. Yuta gets like this every so often, but it takes a while to notice it sometimes, you really have to look in his eyes to see if it’s just his resting bitch face or if he’s genuinely upset.

“Do you want me to ask Taeyong to make you some breakfast? I mean, I would, but I’m not too good at, y’know, cooking, so —“

“Sure,” Yuta says with a shrug. On the coffee table in front of him, there’s his sketchbook, full of random butterfly doodles and vaguely sexual depictions of plant life, with a pen clipped onto its spine. He flips to a new page and just starts scribbling.

  
  


-

  
  


Taeyong brings him breakfast, and he feels like an asshole. Better yet, he can barely grumble out a “thanks” as he’s handed a plate of pancakes. God.

As it gets further into the morning, the rest of the group come to the kitchen for breakfast. Yuta stays on the couch. He hears the soft spoken conversation from the kitchen table, tries to imagine they aren’t talking about him. It’s kind of hard, though.

After a while, after Yuta’s eaten about half of one pancake and gotten syrup stuck to his favorite hoodie’s sleeve, Johnny comes and sits next to him on the couch. The TV’s on, so it’s not too weird, but Yuta knows he’s going to ask what’s wrong with him. Johnny has to make sure everyone is happy, has to interrogate him whenever he gets like this until he wants to pull his own hair out and punch Johnny in the fucking chest. Less than three minutes into the true crime documentary that’s on the TV, Johnny starts talking.

“Hey, man, are you okay? You seem like you’re… not doing great, today.”

Yuta sighs. “I  _ am _ doing great, I’m amazing, Johnny,” he says, staring straight at the TV screen even though he can feel Johnny’s eyes on him.

“What’s wrong?”

Yuta scoffs. 

“If I knew that, I would have fixed it by now.”

Johnny’s pretty insistent when it comes to cheering people up, but he’s smart enough to know that he’ll just annoy Yuta. He’s not giving up, just… giving space. Before he walks away for good, he goes to his room to pick out a plushie to give Yuta, who looks furious as soon as the stuffed duck is thrown in his lap.

* * *

  
  


Yuta’s sitting on his bed, soaking wet and still naked from the shower he took twenty minutes ago. He hasn’t moved. 

It’s another ten minutes, maybe fifteen, maybe something like an hour, before Yuta hears a knock on his door.

He grumbles and throws a pillow to cover his dick before the door opens.

“I didn’t say ‘come in,’” he groans, wrestling with the bedsheets to cover as much of himself as possible.

“Sorry, man,” the intruder says — it’s Mark. “Don’t know why you’re freaking out though, I’ve seen your ass, like, a thousand times already.” 

“Ok, pervert,” Yuta manages to say with a half-real, half-forced chuckle. Thank God, Mark giggles and blushes, and Yuta throws the pillow at him before he gets up to grab a pair of boxers from his dresser. 

“Dude, what happened to your leg?” 

“Okay, I know we agreed you’re a perv,” Yuta stutters, trying to joke his way out of an explanation, “but you don’t have to force it. Be subtle, man.”

Mark lets out a faded chuckle. Yuta doesn’t turn around for Mark to see his face. 

“For real, though,” he presses, “that looks like it hurt, what happened?” 

Yuta tries to maintain his death stare into Mark’s eyes, tries to come up with some old recycled excuse to give, but it’s too late now, he’d just sound like he’s hiding something. Which, yeah, maybe he is.

Mark’s eyes move back down to stare at Yuta’s leg, right under where his boxers stop, where there’s puffy patches of skin, some lighter and some darker than his natural skin tone. The biggest ones are white, puffing out from the surface of his thigh so they look like the stuffing coming out of a teddy bear’s torn stitch. His leg is like cottage cheese, or something. It’s weird. 

“Are those scars?” he asks, genuinely confused. “Or, like, a skin condition or some shit?”

Yuta laughs, kind of, and just figures he should be honest. Mark doesn’t know how to deal with other people’s troubles, anyway, so he won’t nag on Yuta. He’ll probably just try to forget about it and play video games with him.

“Scars,” Yuta says they are. “It’s, sometimes I just… want that, there. I don’t know — it’s hard to explain. It’s like cutting your hair, you know? Just, I can do it any time I want, don’t have to wait for it to grow back.”

Mark looks way more confused than he was when he first saw the scars. Yuta sighs.

“Y’know, like when you feel like you’re going insane and you dye your hair or cut your hair just to  _ feel  _ something? It’s like that, I’m not trying to  _ injure  _ myself or anything.”

“You do that to yourself?”

“Yes, dumbass, that’s what I said.” 

Mark doesn’t laugh, just keeps looking at one fat white line with a blue vein going through it. Yuta gets shy.

“Man, can you please stop staring? Your eyes are a little too close to my dick.” 

That time, Mark laughs, but his eyes are still uneasy when he looks back at Yuta. The older man turns around to put on some pajama pants, long ones, and changes the topic.

“So, why’d you even come in here anyway? Y’know, when I was naked and all — you can just tell me if you want me, Mark Lee.”

Mark starts to fake-gag, but he’s glad Yuta seems minimally more normal, back to his routine of borderline-sexually-harassing Mark. 

“I just wanted to talk to you, you seemed pretty upset today,” he says, “but you seem, like, kind of better now, I guess.” 

“I’m fine, already told you that,” Yuta says. 

“Yeah, I know… I just — ok, look, this probably is gonna make you mad as fuck, but Taeyong told me you left your sketchbook in the living room, and he saw some weird shit in there. I know you’re, like, a tortured artist or whatever, but it made him worried you were gonna hurt yourself, I guess. He didn’t show it to me, he just said, like, that there’s some weird bloody shit and maybe a vagina or something? I don’t know why he mentioned that part, but he was really worried, man.”

Yuta doesn’t reply. 

“Really, I’m sorry and Taeyong’s sorry that he went through your book, but, we’re worried about you,” Mark rambles on, “You’ve been acting weird lately. I was trying to give you space, y’know, but… I dunno, you seem upset. I wanna help you, if I can.”

Yuta takes time to think of what to say. 

“You…” he starts, not looking at Mark. “I — I guess, yeah, I’ve been… lonely. I know I’ve been pushing you guys away, but I’m really not… okay.” 

“Yeah, I figured,” Mark says. “I mean, your leg and, and your, y’know. I don’t know, you just don’t look that great — no offense.”

He moves to sit on the bed with Yuta, not too close, but Yuta immediately clings to him. His lanky limbs wrap around Mark like a koala and he shoves his head into his shoulder until his greasy hair starts to tickle Mark’s nose. Mark’s used to Yuta’s … uh, intensity, but he’s never seen this side of him. The side that’s shaking and squeezing onto Mark harder, biting down a bit too aggressively on the meat of his shoulder. Suddenly he’s rambling, saying something in Korean or Japanese, Mark isn’t sure, but it’s frantic and it’s muffled and wet against his neck. 

He catches some parts, like, “don’t know what’s happening to me,” and, “feels like… gonna explode.” He’s not sure how to handle these things — he just chooses to rub his back, that sounds helpful. He can’t figure out what Yuta’s asking for between his choked-out cries and vaguely inhuman groaning noises, but he hopes he’s giving it to him. 

At some point, Yuta stops talking. After a while, he stops crying. Mark’s other arm, the one not rubbing Yuta’s back, it falls asleep, and then Mark does too. 

He dreams of a Rubik’s cube with tits, for some reason. 


End file.
